The data I had were for 2003 and 2004, so as you can see, there are fluctuations from year to year. In any case the map on the website that you linked to clearly shows the pattern of high fertility in northwestern France that I mentioned, which is the area of France with the least immigrants. On the other hand, there are many immigrants along the Mediterranean, but fertility rates there are quite low as can be seen on the map.

This is not to deny that immigrants have higher fertility rates than native French people (I have already talked about that in post #7), but it is misinformation to claim that the higher fertility rate in France compared to the rest of Europe is due to immigrants. There have been several papers by INSEE and INED that have shown it is not true. INSEE and INED have found that immigrants only increase the French fertility rate by 0.1, which is similar to what can be observed in other European countries by the way. People with a (far right) political agenda usually claim that the high fertility in France is due to immigrants, and they use Seine-Saint-Denis as an example, which is a lot of bad faith given that Seine-Saint-Denis is such a small area where only 2% of the French population live and is in no way representative of the rest of France.

You're a funny guy New Brisavoine (and by funny I mean just as obnoxious a booster as the old Brisavoine).

You also should know that there are precious little examples in the history of the world where the "most probable" demographic predicion actually came true.

Or did I miss something and does Brazil have 200 million?

And are you trying to put one past us with your "300,000 a year" or do you really not understand? A couple of years of high immigration will totally change the demographic situation in Germany so there doesn't have to be 41 continous years of such numbers. Perhaps you don't understand the complexities of demographics?

Anyway, Germany's economical and topographical position dictates that it is highly likely that at one point the current (minor) shrinkage will reverse (most likely because of more immigration and a lower death rate).
Maybe you should look up France's demographic predictions after WW1 and see how much of that came true...

All these years later and it turns out you were right, must have a crystal ball

Right, so someone who isn't a yes-man and is even impudent enough to detail the reasons why he disagrees with you is "obnoxious". Nice conception of debate!

It was followed by two exceptional events: the deadliest world war ever and a big baby boom. History never repeats itself. At least let's hope you're not wishing for a Third World War to prove the population projections of the French and German statistical offices wrong.

Oh, so if Germany's position "dictates", then I guess there's no point in discussing things.

Anyway, end of discussion with you as far as I'm concerned. Your position here seems more like a belief than an opinion based on facts, and there's no arguing with believers. Either you believe or you don't.

You unfortunately were wrong, about pretty much every prediction you made in this thread, see if shiro will lend you his crystal ball

It's anything but a guess. It's a calculation by these statistical offices based on the shape of the age pyramid and the population momentum. Population is like a big steam ship, it can change course, but only very slowly, due to its inherent momentum and the shape of its age pyramid. That's why it is possible to make projections over a few decades (which would be totally impossible with, say, the economy, which can change course radically over just a few years). The only variable that can swing a lot is immigration, but they have made different projections based on different net migration assumption, and like I've already said, it would take a very high sustained net migration in Germany, and a very low net migration in France to have Germany with a larger population than France in 2050. Not totally impossible, but not very realistic (why would France and Germany, with no border between them, and coupled economies, have such strikingly diverging migration patterns over 41 years?).

Brilliant, is there a word for such perfect 'wrongness' your last sentence is great, as all the immigrants did indeed chose germany over france, you pondered why that would happen, well it did, its like the calais camps, immigrants seem to prefer to go to a select group of countries (germany/uk), this obviously reflects in the big growth rates of those two countries compared to france, but i wont make any long term predictions, after reading yours of a few years ago, in this thread, it seems like a bad idea